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Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

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Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#611
post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you deceptively bringing up the Space Shuttle? That was never intended to be a serious cost-effective launch vehicle. Also, why are you deceptively talking about 97% and 99% like the difference between 30x and 100x is not a factor of 3? The Ariane 5, first launching in 2003 which is 7 years earlier than the first Falcon 9 launch, had a launch cost of ~150 M$ in 2015 with a payload to LEO of ~16,000 kg for a c…

Because the Space Shuttle is what SpaceX replaced. A 97% discount relative to that is what SpaceX has managed, after a commercial profit margin. 99% is 2 orders of magnitude. So you're here bickering over 2% with all the class that one would expect.

No it did not. Nobody launched their commercial satellites on Space Shuttles. Soyuz, Atlas, Proton, Delta, Long March, Ariane; those are commercial launch vehicles. Even considering crewed missions we can look to ISS crew missions which were half Soyuz missions and then entirely Soyuz missions between 2009-2020.

And again, you do not seem to understand how percentages work. If I have a thing that costs 1,000 $ and I find a 99% cost reduction it is now 10 $. A 97% cost reduction means it is 30 $. That is a 3x difference. The difference between 1% and 3% is a factor of 3x. That is half of a order of magnitude right there and here you are claiming it is small.

So you are wrong on history, wrong on comparables, and wrong on math to defend a man who runs a company that is legally, and I quote a actual legal decision: a "greviously reprehensible... grossly racist workplace"[1]. But, you know, racism man good because he slightly lowered the cost of cruise ship internet I guess.

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 31.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#612
post #539
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has a higher body count than any serial killer who has ever lived with DOGE alone. He may or may not be clinically diagnosable, but he's a monster either way

While I share your opinion on his character, the first part of what you say is also true for almost everyone who wielded the kinds and scales power that was given to him via DOGE: Every battleship is a hospital not built, etc.

> Every battleship is a hospital not built

It's sad that this is believed when it's most often the opposite. Especially in this case we have a literal historical example. You'll never guess what Henry Kaiser built before creating Kaiser, the largest set of hospitals in CA.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible for Musk to appeal, but success is vanishingly unlikely. He doesn't have to win to succeed. The richest man on the planet can keep his enemies tied up in court needlessly until the day he dies.

Or just ruin their already shaky reputations.

I assumed it was trash already.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#614
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share your opinion on his character, the first part of what you say is also true for almost everyone who wielded the kinds and scales power that was given to him via DOGE: Every battleship is a hospital not built, etc.

> Every battleship is a hospital not built It's sad that this is believed when it's most often the opposite. Especially in this case we have a literal historical example. You'll never guess what Henry Kaiser built before creating Kaiser, the largest set of hospitals in CA.

I can't imagine why you think that's a good example.

The money spent on the ships* could not be double-spent on hospitals. The workers whose manual labour was dedicated to those later ships could not be simultaneously dedicated to more hospitals. The crew of a battleship cannot be simultaneously working in a hospital, the maintenance teams repairing it cannot be simultaneously repairing a hospital.

Every resource-management game demonstrates this principle, even if they're all gross simplifications.

* Wikipedia says Kaiser's ships were cargo and transport, not battleships, which means they had the potential to be a net positive on the economy. This is better than a battleship, because domestic military gear can't be a net positive: the point is to keep matériel and personnel around to deter enemies, and only use them for training and when enemies aren't deterred.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#615
post #565
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share your opinion on his character, the first part of what you say is also true for almost everyone who wielded the kinds and scales power that was given to him via DOGE: Every battleship is a hospital not built, etc.

There's a big difference between leaders making carefully considered decisions that have life and death consequences and what doge did.

Sure, this is why I opened the way I did. I agree Musk's a wrong 'un.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a lawless nation lol? Talk about delusion.

The president is using the DoJ to represent him in a civil appeal. The president is creating a slush fund to pay off people who acted violently on his behalf. The president has declared himself and his family immune from IRS investigation indefinitely. The president is selling pardons. The president is running influence schemes in the form of crypto sales and ballroom "donations". The president is at a minimum enabli…

Yeah so is every other country on the face of the earth. Lawless is Somalia. The US is normal.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president is using the DoJ to represent him in a civil appeal. The president is creating a slush fund to pay off people who acted violently on his behalf. The president has declared himself and his family immune from IRS investigation indefinitely. The president is selling pardons. The president is running influence schemes in the form of crypto sales and ballroom "donations". The president is at a minimum enabli…

Yeah so is every other country on the face of the earth. Lawless is Somalia. The US is normal.

Got it, you don't value the rule of law. We are not the same, you and I.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#618
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bad theory, but I think you're making the logical man's mistake of trying to ascribe a lot of intelligence and strategy to a move because on the surface it's irrational. Not every villain's move is a mysterious Xanatos gambit. Sometimes billionaire assholes just do dumb stuff because they can and/or because they're full of small-minded hatred. Sometimes rich, powerful people do stuff that's irrational. Whe…

I think this depends on point of view. I do think much of this comes down to sour grapes that they didn't let Elon control OpenAI, and this is the wedge he chose to retaliate. Would he have sour grapes if he didn't want to win the AI race himself? Really comes down to what you think his primary motivation is and what are just benefits.

When Musk signed on to help OpenAI initially, he claimed it was to set up guardrails so AI would be aligned with the best interests of humans.

After OpenAI went for-profit and China became a significant AI powerhouse, he no longer cares about safety and just insists that his team get “there “ (whatever the destination is) before “they” do. I’m not so certain he has a coherent belief system, but is probably further into AI psychosis or paranoid delusions than we want to believe.

Terrible options for a person with some of the most wealth in the tech world and perhaps just as influential, given that he effectively ensured Trump won in 2024, had direct foreign policy comms with Putin post-2022, controls the only cost-effective gateway to space, was given the keys to destroy his own regulators, is impregnating dozens of women (but perhaps not paying for those kids), etc.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. The driverless cars with a safety driver at the wheel. So.... driverless. You know that it's a public service and we literally can see the drivers, right?

They are operating without drivers in Austin.

Chase vehicle.

In any case, the promise was full coast to coast self driving by 2016. Not a limited run of some automatic taxis (mostly for publicity) that only operates with safety drivers or safety chase vehicles by 2026 in only one city.

Finally, we've gone from talking about top level AIs chips (Dojo) to limited run safety driver based taxis. It's really astonishing how far you are moving the goalposts here looking for a win.

You know that Elon Musks primary AI effort is xAI, which has failed so hard it's being rescued by SpaceX right? There's like the actual AI effort we can talk about here.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#620
post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Space Shuttle is what SpaceX replaced. A 97% discount relative to that is what SpaceX has managed, after a commercial profit margin. 99% is 2 orders of magnitude. So you're here bickering over 2% with all the class that one would expect.

No it did not. Nobody launched their commercial satellites on Space Shuttles. Soyuz, Atlas, Proton, Delta, Long March, Ariane; those are commercial launch vehicles. Even considering crewed missions we can look to ISS crew missions which were half Soyuz missions and then entirely Soyuz missions between 2009-2020. And again, you do not seem to understand how percentages work. If I have a thing that costs 1,000 $ and I…

You're engaging in some wild freak out mental gymnastics here. Seriously, just read your paragraph about me not understanding percents, and tell me you don't get hard-core Chewbacca Defense [1] vibes. It seriously reads not only like satire, but pretty good satire! You just need to add a QED to the end. lol

And don't trust flatterbots to argue for you. They hallucinate regularly and just make you look more absurd. The Space Shuttle was flying crewed missions to the ISS until 2011. The reason they stopped is because the Space Shuttle had been retired and commercial crew began, which was ultimately won by SpaceX. Well SpaceX and Boeing in an overt act of insiderism, but Boeing is still - 15 years later - trying to figure out how this whole space thingy works.

The alternatives you mention were never commercially viable against SpaceX. All not only cost multiple times more but come with significantly worse reliability records as well as lacking the payload capacity of something like Falcon Heavy for those missions that require it. And when you look at things like the Soyuz, the sticker price doesn't matter so much as the price companies were obligated to pay. They offered cheap internal launches, and charged dramatically higher rates for foreign launchers - including NASA. By the end NASA was paying $90mil/seat.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV6NoNkDGsU

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